“Gone are the days of cruddy old phone lines and useless coax cable running to every building.” Mr. Sprague stated going on to say “It makes no sense to run those things in a new home when cable and satellite TV will be dead in 5 years and no one uses an analog phone service anymore.”

Hackers infected 70 percent of storage devices that record data from D.C. police surveillance cameras eight days before President Trump’s inauguration, forcing major citywide reinstallation efforts, according to the police and the city’s technology office.

If you have an Android device, it is a very capable possibility. The idea in which it is implemented is utilizing a method known formally as Spearphishing. (No, unfortunately, it is not a term referring to the extreme pastime of underwater fishing.)

Spearphishing has a more sinister definition in the tech industry.. If you are unfamiliar with the term or practice, I would highly recommend a quick online search to expand your tech vocabulary. A sixteen-page analysis of findings released on July 12, 2019, by a team of expert researchers from the University of Alabama and Rutgers University, exposed a very real security threat. Through their research and testing, they developed a new 3-pronged attack on the Android OS known as: Spearphone*p2 L13.

The general take-away from reading this technically descriptive analysis simply boils down to understanding that the most mundane features on a phone, such as using voice commands for your search engine or utilizing speakerphone during an important business conversation. Those unassuming practices may expose your personal and confidential data to a cybercriminal or someone with malicious intent. Always be aware of every possibility and have a deep understanding of the importance of cybersecurity to your personal life and business. The question is not if, but when, and whether or not you a worthy target? Do you work for a company in which you retain sensitive work-related data on your phone?

A user's unique identifier, UDCID, is leaked via a cookie and it could lead to account compromise if this identifier is captured or otherwise known, in the case tested the UDCID was known to be the institutional ID printed on ID cards. The UDCID could be used to exploit a race condition that would provide an attacker with unauthorized access. For a student, the attacker could drop them from their courses, reject financial aid, change their personal information, etc. For a professor, this could lead to an inability to manage their courses, allow a malicious student to put in false final grades, etc. For an administrator, an attacker could change users information, place false holds on student accounts, etc.

Throughout 2018 and 2019, malicious cyber actors used desktop sharing software to facilitate a range of network intrusion activities, using both authorized and unauthorized installations to gain control of victim systems and access to otherwise inaccessible files. Desktop sharing software has multiple legitimate uses, enabling telework, tech support, and file transfers, but can also be exploited through malicious actors’ use of social engineering tactics and other illicit measures. Specifically, cyber actors typically convince victims to voluntarily download and install the desktop sharing software, often through the guise of providing technical support or with the assistance of corrupt insiders. Cyber actors also use stolen credentials to access victim systems through existing desktop sharing software installations. This gives cyber actors complete control over an affected system, enabling them to perform a range of malicious activities.

“They contacted me to become a "shipping clerk" where I received packages to my address, inspected them, and rerouted them to their international customer. The compensation was said to be 2500/month before taxes. I was contacted by HR, had two supervisors I reported to, signed a DOCUSIGN document from HR confirming my employment. I had a phone interview with 3 "levels" from the business. I even got offered a "promotion" 3 weeks in because I was a promising new hire. My pay day came and went, and when I talked to HR about it they suddenly didn't know who I was…” —a military spouse from North Carolina

Fiserv, Inc., a major provider of technology services to financial institutions, just fixed a glaring weakness in its Web platform that exposed personal and financial details of countless customers across hundreds of bank Web sites, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Cyber security is complicated. Cyber security tips are not. To be an expert, it takes years of training and experience to ensure that all aspects of what can go wrong are accounted for and understood. But for the Average Joe, that amount of time and commitment is an unrealistic expectation. That’s why these six sexy, simple cyber security tips should be studied seriously by anyone who uses the internet (that’s you!).

It is becoming all too common that our electronic devices stop working or need to be replaced. When that time comes, it is important that we take the appropriate steps before saying farewell to our equipment.

BEC (Business Email Compromise) and EAC (Email Account Compromise) scams are becoming a major threat to businesses large and small. In these scams, cybercriminals use social engineering techniques to manipulate employees to provide them with the requested information for fraudulent purposes.

An organization's culture highlights the beliefs and behaviors of employees and management. Recently, new trends of creating a security culture have grown in importance; one in which all individuals are alert for cyber threats, follow company policies and procedures and report all security incidents.

After acknowledging June 28 that portions of its network were affected, Nuance, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, is still picking up the pieces. In addition to transcription, Nuance named about 10 other affected products, including those used for radiology, billing and software that tracks quality of care.

The cover, GUCCIFER2, is not a particularly good one. The GUCCIFER2 website has only a single entry, the one claiming responsibility for the DNC hack. There is no history of this entity existing before the operation began (the oldest Google result is the GUCCIFER2 website.) In future I expect that services will develop “cover” entities for use in times of crisis, just like they prepare safe houses before they need them. Note to agencies: preparing and maintaining cover hacker identities should now be considered standard tradecraft, part of “putting the plumbing in place.”

Since Shamoon incidents feature the infiltration and escalation stages of targeted attacks, X-Force IRIS responders sought out the attackers’ entry point. Their findings pointed to what appears to be the initial point of compromise the attackers used: a document containing a malicious macro that, when approved to execute, enabled C2 communications to the attacker’s server and remote shell via PowerShell.

FireEye recently detected malicious Microsoft Office RTF documents that leverage a previously undisclosed vulnerability. This vulnerability allows a malicious actor to execute a Visual Basic script when the user opens a document containing an embedded exploit. FireEye has observed several Office documents exploiting the vulnerability that download and execute malware payloads from different well-known malware families.

FireEye shared the details of the vulnerability with Microsoft and has been coordinating for several weeks public disclosure timed with the release of a patch by Microsoft to address the vulnerability. After recent public disclosure by another company, this blog serves to acknowledge FireEye’s awareness and coverage of these attacks.

The attack involves a threat actor emailing a Microsoft Word document to a targeted user with an embedded OLE2link object. When the user opens the document, winword.exe issues a HTTP request to a remote server to retrieve a malicious .hta file, which appears as a fake RTF file. The Microsoft HTA application loads and executes the malicious script. In both observed documents the malicious script terminated the winword.exe process, downloaded additional payload(s), and loaded a decoy document for the user to see. The original winword.exe process is terminated in order to hide a user prompt generated by the OLE2link.

The vulnerability is bypassing most mitigations; however, as noted above, FireEye email and network products detect the malicious documents. Microsoft Office users are recommended to apply the patch as soon as it is available.

Microsoft just landed another major government customer: the United States Army.

In an contract awarded to Microsoft partner Dell, the U.S. Army agreed to purchase 50,000 licenses of Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft announced in a blog post today. Office 365’s cloud-based work and collaboration apps include secure email, Microsoft’s Lync messaging app, SharePoint collaboration tools, and other Office web apps.